[texhax] learning tex vs latex

[William Adams]

On Oct 30, 2009, at 10:41 AM, bill lam wrote:

> Are various typesetting rules for typography already
> meant to be in-built inside Tex (binary) or Plain Tex format?

Some are. c.f. \frenchspacing but Plain TeX affords so little in the  
way of formatting that much is left to the user --- that's why Knuth  
has manmac and the eplain macros were created --- there're a number of  
other such macros as well.

Examining the difficulties w/ up-dating _TeX for the Impatient_  
affords an interesting insight into how much of a success LaTeX is and  
how well it has adapted to contemporary expectations for publishing.

> Or it
> is only the Latex format provides such help.


LaTeX provides more of a thorough formatting treatment and more  
elements.

There're various efforts to expand on this, c.f., Peter Wilson's  
memoir package for U.S. standards, and Koma script for European. List  
of such classes here:

http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/bytopic.html#classes

William

-- 
William Adams
senior graphic designer
Fry Communications
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.